Reading this won't make you great! (Think it is a good time to re-read)

CW88888: Reading this won't make us great but may make our mind stronger. No?

Click? Reading this won't make you great!


And finally the most important, and rarest, trait of all: the ability to live through volatility without changing your investment thought process.

This, said Mr Sellers, is almost impossible for most people to do; when the chips are down they have a terrible time not selling their stocks at a loss. They have a really hard time getting themselves to average down or to put any money into stocks at all when the market is going down.

'People don't like short-term pain even if it would result in better long-term results, he said. Very few investors can handle the volatility required for high portfolio returns. They equate short-term volatility with risk.

'This is irrational; risk means that if you are wrong about a bet you make, you lose money. A swing up or down over a relatively short time period is not a loss and therefore not risk, unless you are prone to panicking at the bottom and locking in the loss.

'But most people just can't see it that way; their brains won't let them. Their panic instinct steps in and shuts down the normal brain function.'